I'm repairing an HP Pavilion with XP home SP3 locked to the fried motherboard as a favor to a friend. My friend insists on XP and wants/needs to preserve the installed programs & data on the drive (which is still good when tested elsewhere). It has some
business radio reprogramming s/w that only runs under XP. We know he'll need to buy a retail version. I can't find what really works, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/292607 says it can be upgraded to XP Pro (which he'd like) but that only covers SP1. My
proposed seller says home can't be upgraded to Pro without a full reinstall and hasn't answered home oem to home retail. XP Mode under W7 pro isn't an option, if the serial port -> radio timing isn't exactly right the expensive business radios become expensive
bricks and he won't risk it like he will with XP on new MB/CPU. He has current image backups but they're still locked, of course. The drive passes the vendor's test (in another machine, of course).
Can XP Home SP3 OEM be upgraded to XP Pro SP3 without a reinstall (i.e reformat & install)? Can XP Home SP3 OEM be "upgraded" to XP Home SP3 Retail without reinstalling? Is there a better way (keeping XP) to fix this?
Thanks!
